William Godwin: his Friends and Contemporaries
Ch. I. 1800
Samuel Taylor Coleridge to William Godwin, [11 September 1800]
“Monday, [Sep.
11, 1800.]
“Dear Godwin,—There are
vessels every week from Dublin to Workington, which place is 16 miles from my
house, through a divine country, but these are idle regrets. I know not the
nature of your present pursuits, whether or no they are such as to require the
vicinity of large and curious libraries. If you were engaged in any work of
imagination or reasoning, not biographical, not historical, I should repeat and
urge my invitation, after my wife’s confinement. Our house is situated on
a rising ground, not two furlongs from Keswick, about as much from the Lake
Derwentwater, and about two miles from the Lake Bassenthwaite—both lakes and
mountains we command. The river Greta runs behind our house, and before it too,
and Skiddaw is behind us—not half a mile distant, indeed just distant enough to
enable us to view it as a Whole. The garden, orchards, fields, and immediate
country all delightful. I have, or have the use of, no inconsiderable
collection of books. In my library you will find all the
Poets and ![]()
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Philosophers, and
many of the best old writers. Below, in our parlour, belonging to our landlord,
but in my possession, are almost all the usual trash of Johnsons, Gibbons, Robertsons,
&c., with the Encyclopedia
Britannica, &c. Sir Wilfred
Lawson’s magnificent library is some 8 or 9 miles distant,
and he is liberal in the highest degree in the management of it. And now for
your letter. I swell out my chest and place my hand on my heart, and swear
aloud to all that you have written, or shall write, against lawyers, and the
practice of the law. When you next write so eloquently and so well against it,
or against anything, be so good as to leave a larger space for your wafer; as
by neglect of this, a part of your last was obliterated. The character of
Curran, which you have sketched most
ably, is a frequent one in its moral essentials, though, of course among the
most rare, if we take it with all its intellectual accompaniments. Whatever I
have read of Curran’s, has impressed me with a deep
conviction of his genius. Are not the Irish in general a more eloquent race
than we? Of North Wales my recollections are faint, and as to Wicklow I only
know from the newspapers that it is a mountainous country. As far as my memory
will permit me to decide on the grander parts of Caernarvonshire, I may say
that the single objects are superior to any which I have seen elsewhere, but
there is a deficiency in combination. I know of no mountain in the North equal
to Snowdon, but then we have an encampment of huge mountains, in no harmony
perhaps to the eye of a mere painter, but always interesting, various, and, as
it were, nutritive. Height is assuredly an advantage, as it connects the earth
with the sky, by the clouds that are ever skimming the summits, or climbing up,
or creeping down the sides, or rising from the chasm, like smoke from a
cauldron, or veiling or bridging the higher parts or lower parts of the
waterfalls. That you were less impressed by N. Wales I can easily believe; it
is possible that the scenes of Wicklow may be superior, but it is certain that
you were in a finer irritability of spirit to enjoy them. The first pause and
silence after a return from a very interesting visit is somewhat connected with
languor in all of us. Besides, as you have ![]()
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observed,
mountains, and mountainous scenery, taken collectively and cursorily, must
depend for their charms on their novelty. They put on their immortal interest
then first, when we have resided among them, and learned to understand their
language, their written characters, and intelligible sounds, and all their
eloquence, so various, so unwearied. Then you will hear no ‘twice-told
tale.’ I question if there be a room in England which commands a view of
mountains, and lakes, and woods, and vales, superior to that in which I am now
sitting. I say this, because it is destined for your study, if you come. You
are kind enough to say that you feel yourself more natural and unreserved with
me than with others. I suppose that this in great measure arises from my own
ebullient unreservedness. Something, too, I will hope may be attributed to the
circumstance that my affections are interested deeply in my opinions. But here,
too, you will meet with Wordsworth,
‘the latch of whose shoe I am unworthy to unloose,’ and
five miles from Wordsworth, Charles Lloyd has taken a house.
Wordsworth is publishing a second volume of the
‘Lyrical
Ballads,’ which title is to be dropped, and his
‘Poems’ substituted. Have you seen Sheridan since your return? How is it with your tragedy? Were
you in town when Miss
Bayley’s tragedy was represented? How was it
that it proved so uninteresting? Was the fault in the theatre, the audience, or
the play? It must have excited a deeper feeling in you than that of mere
curiosity, for doubtless the tragedy has great merit. I know not indeed how far
Kemble might have watered and
thinned its consistence; I speak of the printed play. Have you read the
‘Wallenstein?’ Prolix and crowded and dragging as it is, it is yet
quite a model for its judicious management of the sequence of the scenes, and
such it is held in German theatres. Our English acting plays are many of them
wofully deficient in this part of the dramatic trade and mystery.
“Hartley is
well, and all life and action.—Yours, with unfeigned esteem,
“Kisses for Mary and Fanny. God
love them! I wish you would come and look out for a house for yourself
here. You ![]()
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know, ‘I
wish’ is privileged to have something silly to follow it.”
Joanna Baillie (1762-1851)
Scottish poet and dramatist whose
Plays on the Passions
(1798-1812) were much admired, especially the gothic
De Montfort,
produced at Drury Lane in 1800.
Hartley Coleridge [Old Bachelor] (1796-1849)
The eldest son of the poet; he was educated at Merton College, Oxford, contributed essays
in the
London Magazine and
Blackwood's, and
published
Lives of Distinguished Northerns (1832).
John Philpot Curran (1750-1817)
Irish statesman and orator; as a Whig MP (from 1783) he defended the United Irishmen in
Parliament (1798).
Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)
Author of
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
(1776-1788).
Fanny Imlay Godwin (1794-1816)
The daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft and Gilbert Imlay; she lived in the Godwin household
and died a suicide.
William Godwin (1756-1836)
English novelist and political philosopher; author of
An Inquiry
concerning the Principles of Political Justice (1793) and
Caleb
Williams (1794); in 1797 he married Mary Wollstonecraft.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
English man of letters, among many other works he edited
A Dictionary
of the English Language (1755) and Shakespeare (1765), and wrote
Lives of the Poets (1779-81).
John Philip Kemble (1757-1823)
English actor renowned for his Shakespearean roles; he was manager of Drury Lane
(1783-1802) and Covent Garden (1803-1808).
Sir Wilfrid Lawson, tenth baronet (1764 c.-1806)
Of Braighton, the son of Gilfrid Lawson (d. 1796); he was Sheriff of Cumberland (1801)
and an art collector and patron of the arts.
Charles Lloyd (1775-1839)
Quaker poet; a disciple of Coleridge and friend of Charles Lamb, he published
Poetical Essays on the Character of Pope (1821) and other
volumes.
William Robertson (1721-1793)
Educated at Edinburgh University of which he became principal (1762), he was a
highly-regarded historian, the author of
History of Scotland in the Reign
of Queen Mary and of King James VI (1759) and
The History of the
Reign of Charles V (1769).
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley [née Godwin] (1797-1851)
English novelist, daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecaft, and the second wife
of Percy Bysshe Shelley. She is the author of
Frankenstein (1818)
and
The Last Man (1835) and the editor of Shelley's works
(1839-40).
Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816)
Anglo-Irish playwright, author of
The School for Scandal (1777),
Whig MP and ally of Charles James Fox (1780-1812).
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
With Coleridge, author of
Lyrical Ballads (1798), Wordsworth
survived his early unpopularity to succeed Robert Southey as poet laureate in 1843.
Encyclopædia Britannica; or, a Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, compiled upon
a new plan. 3 vols (Edinburgh: Colin Macfarquhar, 1771). 3 vols, 1768-1771, ed. William Smellie; 10 vols, 1777–1784, ed. James Tytler; 18 vols,
1788–1797, ed. Colin Macfarquhar and George Gleig; supplement to 3rd, 2 vols, 1801; 20
vols, 1801–1809, ed. James Millar; 20 vols, 1817, ed. James Millar; supplement to 5th, 6
vols, 1816–1824, ed. Macvey Napier; 20 vols, 1820–1823, ed. Charles Maclaren; 21 vols,
1830–1842, ed. Macvey Napier and James Browne.
